Debbie Reynolds (Mary Frances Reynolds, April 1, 1932 – December 28, 2016) … Read Full Bio ↴Debbie Reynolds (Mary Frances Reynolds, April 1, 1932 – December 28, 2016) was an American actress, singer, businesswoman, film historian, and humanitarian. Her breakout role was the portrayal of Helen Kane in the 1950 film Three Little Words, for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. However, it was her first leading role in 1952 at age 19, as Kathy Selden in Singin' in the Rain, that set her on the path to fame. By the mid-1950s, she was a major star. Other notable successes include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), Susan Slept Here (1954), Bundle of Joy (1956 Golden Globe nomination), The Catered Affair (1956 National Board of Review Best Supporting Actress Winner), and Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), in which her performance of the song "Tammy" reached number one on the music charts. In 1959, she released her first pop music album, entitled Debbie.
She starred in How the West Was Won (1963), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a biographical film about the famously boisterous Molly Brown. Her performance as Brown earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other notable films include The Singing Nun (1966), Divorce American Style (1967), What's the Matter with Helen? (1971), Mother (1996 Golden Globe nomination), and In & Out (1997). Reynolds was also a noted cabaret performer. In 1979 she founded the Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio in North Hollywood, which still operates today.
In 1969 she starred in her own television show The Debbie Reynolds Show, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. In 1973 Reynolds starred in a Broadway revival of the musical Irene and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical.She was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in A Gift of Love (1999) and an Emmy Award for playing Grace's mother Bobbi on Will & Grace. At the turn of the millennium, Reynolds reached a new younger generation with her role as Aggie Cromwell in Disney's Halloweentown series. In 1988 she released her autobiography titled, Debbie: My Life. In 2013, she released an updated version titled Unsinkable: A Memoir.
Reynolds was a noted businesswoman, having operated her own hotel in Las Vegas. She was also a collector of film memorabilia, beginning with items purchased at the landmark 1970 MGM auction. She was the former president of The Thalians, an organization dedicated to mental health causes. Reynolds continued to perform successfully on stage, television, and film into her eighties. In January 2015, Reynolds received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2016 she received the Academy Awards Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. In the same year, a documentary about her life was released titled Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.
On December 28, 2016, one day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher, Reynolds died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles.
Reynolds regularly appeared in movie musicals during the 1950s and had several hit records during the period. Her song "Aba Daba Honeymoon" (featured in the film Two Weeks with Love (1950) as a duet with Carleton Carpenter) was a top-three hit in 1951. Her most high-profile film role was in Singin' in the Rain (1952), a satire on movie making in Hollywood during the transition from silent to sound pictures. It costarred Gene Kelly, whom she called a "great dancer and cinematic genius," adding, "He made me a star. I was 18 and he taught me how to dance and how to work hard and be dedicated." In 1956 she appeared in Bundle of Joy with her then-husband, Eddie Fisher.
Her recording of the song "Tammy" (1957; from Tammy and the Bachelor), earned her a gold record, and was the best-selling single by a female vocalist in 1957. It was number one for five weeks on the Billboard pop charts. In the movie (the first of the Tammy film series), she co-starred with Leslie Nielsen.
Reynolds also scored two other top-25 Billboard hits with "A Very Special Love" (#20 in January 1958) and "Am I That Easy to Forget" (#25 in March 1960)—a pop-music version of a country-music hit made famous by both songwriters Carl Belew (in 1959), Skeeter Davis (in 1960), and several years later by singer Engelbert Humperdinck.
During these years, she also headlined in major Las Vegas showrooms. Reynolds' last album was a Christmas record with the late Donald O'Connor entitled Chrissy the Christmas Mouse.
Mary Frances Reynolds was born on April 1, 1932, in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Maxine (née Harmon; 1913–1999) and Raymond Francis Reynolds (1903–1986), a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad. She was of Scottish-Irish and English ancestry, and was raised in a strict Nazarene church. She had a brother two years her senior, and Reynolds was a Girl Scout, once saying that she wanted to die as the world's oldest living Girl Scout. Her father dug ditches and her mother took in washing clothes for others for income, while they they lived in a "shack" on Magnolia Street, in El Paso. "We may have been poor," she said, "but we always had something to eat, even if Dad had to go out on the desert and shoot jack rabbits."
One of the advantages of having been poor is that you learn to appreciate good fortune and the value of a dollar, and poverty holds no fear for you because you know you've gone through it and you can do it again...But we were always a happy family and a religious one. And I'm trying to inculcate in my children the same sense of values, the same tone that my mother gave to me."
Her family moved to Burbank, California, in 1939. At age sixteen, in 1948, while a student at Burbank High School, she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest. Soon after, she had a contract with Warner Bros and acquired a new first name via Jack Warner.
During her teenage years in Burbank, she rarely dated, said one of her closes high school friends. "They never found her attractive in school. She was cute, but sort of tomboyish, and her family never had any money to speak of. She never dressed well or drove a car. And, I think, during all the years in school, she was invited to only one dance." Her friend adds:
I say this in all sincerity. Debbie can serve as an inspiration to all young American womanhood. She came up the hard way, and she has a realistic sense of values based on faith, love, work and money. Life has been kind to her because she has been kind to life. She's a young woman with a conscience, which is something rare in Hollywood actresses. She also has a refreshing sense of honesty.
Her starring role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) led to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She then portrayed Jeanine Deckers in The Singing Nun (1966). In what Reynolds once called the "stupidest mistake of my entire career", she made headlines in 1970 after instigating a fight with the NBC television network over cigarette advertising on her weekly television show. Although she was at the time television's highest paid female performer, she quit the show for breaking its contract:
I was shocked to discover that the initial commercial aired during the premiere of my new series was devoted to a nationally advertised brand of cigarette (Pall Mall). I fully outlined my personal feelings concerning cigarette advertising ... that I will not be a party to such commercials which I consider directly opposed to health and well-being.
Reynolds continued to make appearances in film and television. She played Helen Chappel Hackett's mother, Deedee Chappel, on an episode of Wings titled, "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother", which originally aired on November 22, 1994. From 1999 to its 2006 series finale, she played Grace Adler's theatrical mother, Bobbi Adler, on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, which earned her an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2000. She plays a recurring role in the Disney Channel Original Movie Halloweentown film series as Aggie Cromwell. Reynolds made a guest appearance as a presenter at the 69th Academy Awards in 1997. She made a cameo role as herself in the 2004 film Connie and Carla. In 2013 she appeared in Behind the Candelabra, as the mother of Liberace.
With limited film and television opportunities coming her way, Reynolds accepted an opportunity to make her Broadway debut. She starred in the 1973 revival of Irene, a musical first produced 60 years before.[25] When asked why she waited so long to appear in a Broadway play, she explained:
Primarily because I had two children growing up. I could make movies and recordings and play in nearby Las Vegas and handle a television series without being away from them. Now, they are well on the way to being adults. Also, there was the matter of being offered a show that I felt might be right for me ... I felt that Irene was it and now was the time.
Along with Reynolds, her daughter Carrie was also making her Broadway debut in the play.[26] The production broke records for the highest weekly gross of any musical. For that production, she received a Tony nomination. Reynolds also starred in a self-titled Broadway revue, Debbie, in 1976. She toured with Harve Presnell in Annie Get Your Gun,[28] then wrapped up the Broadway run of Woman of the Year in 1983. In the late 1980s Reynolds repeated her role as Molly Brown in the stage version of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, first opposite Presnell (repeating his original Broadway and movie role) and later with Ron Raines.
Reynolds amassed a large collection of movie memorabilia, beginning with items from the landmark 1970 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer auction, and displayed them, first in a museum at her Las Vegas hotel and casino during the 1990s and later in a museum close to the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. On several occasions, she auctioned off items from the collection.
The museum was to relocate to be the centerpiece of the Belle Island Village tourist attraction in the resort city of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but the developer went bankrupt. The museum filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009.
Todd Fisher, Reynolds' son, announced that his mother was "heartbroken" to have to auction off her collection. It was valued at $10.79 million in the bankruptcy filing. The Los Angeles auction firm Profiles in History was given the responsibility of conducting a series of auctions. Among the "more than 3500 costumes, 20,000 photographs, and thousands of movie posters, costume sketches, and props" included in the sales were Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat and Marilyn Monroe's white "subway dress", whose skirt is lifted up by the breeze from a passing subway train in the film The Seven Year Itch (1955). The dress sold for $4.6 million; the final auction was held in May 2014.
In 1979, Reynolds opened her own dance studio in North Hollywood. In 1983 she released an exercise video titled Do It Debbie's Way!.
She purchased the Clarion Hotel and Casino, a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, in 1992 and renamed it the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel, but it was not a success. In 1997, Reynolds was forced to declare bankruptcy.
In June 2010, she replaced Ivana Trump answering reader queries for the weekly paper Globe.
Reynolds was married three times. Her first marriage was to singer Eddie Fisher in 1955. They were the parents of Carrie and Todd Fisher. The couple divorced in 1959 when Fisher had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds' good friend at the time, shortly after the death of Taylor's husband Mike Todd. The Eddie Fisher-Elizabeth Taylor affair caused a serious public scandal, even leading to the cancellation of Eddie Fisher's television show at the time. In 2011, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, just weeks before Elizabeth Taylor's death, Reynolds explained that she and Taylor happened to be traveling at the same time on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s when they made up. Reynolds sent a note to Taylor's room, and Taylor sent a note in reply asking to have dinner with Reynolds and end their feud. The two reconciled, and, as Reynolds put it, "... we had a wonderful evening with a lot of laughs". The 1990 film Postcards from the Edge was written by Reynolds' daughter Carrie Fisher and was semi-autobiographical, with the character of "Doris Mann" based on Reynolds.
Reynolds' second marriage, to millionaire businessman Harry Karl, lasted from 1960 to 1973. Reynolds later found herself in financial difficulty because of Karl's gambling and bad investments.
Reynolds' third marriage was to real estate developer Richard Hamlett from 1984 to 1996.
In 2010, she appeared in her own West End show Debbie Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous. Beginning in 1955, Reynolds was active in The Thalians, a charitable organization devoted to children and adults with mental health issues; In 2011 she stepped down after 56 years of involvement and became an emerita member.
Reynolds was hospitalized in October 2012 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, due to an adverse reaction to medication. She canceled appearances and concert engagements for the next three months.
On December 23, 2016, Reynolds' daughter, actress and writer Carrie Fisher, suffered a heart attack on a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles, and died at the age of 60 on December 27. On December 28 Reynolds was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, in fair-to-serious condition after a stroke at her son's home. Later that afternoon, Reynolds died in the hospital.
Reynolds is survived by her son Todd Fisher and her granddaughter Billie Lourd. Her son said that his mother's stress from the death of her daughter was partly responsible for her stroke. "Reynolds told him she missed her daughter and wanted to be with her," according to news reports.
Reynolds was the 1955 Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year. Her foot and handprints are preserved at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6654 Hollywood Boulevard, for live performance and a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars dedicated to her. In keeping with the celebrity tradition of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival of Winchester, Virginia, Reynolds was honored as the Grand Marshal of the 2011 ABF that took place from April 26 to May 1, 2011.
In November 2006 Reynolds received the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from Chapman University (Orange, California). On May 17, 2007, she was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nevada, Reno, where she had contributed for many years to the film studies program.
She starred in How the West Was Won (1963), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a biographical film about the famously boisterous Molly Brown. Her performance as Brown earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other notable films include The Singing Nun (1966), Divorce American Style (1967), What's the Matter with Helen? (1971), Mother (1996 Golden Globe nomination), and In & Out (1997). Reynolds was also a noted cabaret performer. In 1979 she founded the Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio in North Hollywood, which still operates today.
In 1969 she starred in her own television show The Debbie Reynolds Show, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. In 1973 Reynolds starred in a Broadway revival of the musical Irene and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical.She was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in A Gift of Love (1999) and an Emmy Award for playing Grace's mother Bobbi on Will & Grace. At the turn of the millennium, Reynolds reached a new younger generation with her role as Aggie Cromwell in Disney's Halloweentown series. In 1988 she released her autobiography titled, Debbie: My Life. In 2013, she released an updated version titled Unsinkable: A Memoir.
Reynolds was a noted businesswoman, having operated her own hotel in Las Vegas. She was also a collector of film memorabilia, beginning with items purchased at the landmark 1970 MGM auction. She was the former president of The Thalians, an organization dedicated to mental health causes. Reynolds continued to perform successfully on stage, television, and film into her eighties. In January 2015, Reynolds received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2016 she received the Academy Awards Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. In the same year, a documentary about her life was released titled Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.
On December 28, 2016, one day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher, Reynolds died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles.
Reynolds regularly appeared in movie musicals during the 1950s and had several hit records during the period. Her song "Aba Daba Honeymoon" (featured in the film Two Weeks with Love (1950) as a duet with Carleton Carpenter) was a top-three hit in 1951. Her most high-profile film role was in Singin' in the Rain (1952), a satire on movie making in Hollywood during the transition from silent to sound pictures. It costarred Gene Kelly, whom she called a "great dancer and cinematic genius," adding, "He made me a star. I was 18 and he taught me how to dance and how to work hard and be dedicated." In 1956 she appeared in Bundle of Joy with her then-husband, Eddie Fisher.
Her recording of the song "Tammy" (1957; from Tammy and the Bachelor), earned her a gold record, and was the best-selling single by a female vocalist in 1957. It was number one for five weeks on the Billboard pop charts. In the movie (the first of the Tammy film series), she co-starred with Leslie Nielsen.
Reynolds also scored two other top-25 Billboard hits with "A Very Special Love" (#20 in January 1958) and "Am I That Easy to Forget" (#25 in March 1960)—a pop-music version of a country-music hit made famous by both songwriters Carl Belew (in 1959), Skeeter Davis (in 1960), and several years later by singer Engelbert Humperdinck.
During these years, she also headlined in major Las Vegas showrooms. Reynolds' last album was a Christmas record with the late Donald O'Connor entitled Chrissy the Christmas Mouse.
Mary Frances Reynolds was born on April 1, 1932, in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Maxine (née Harmon; 1913–1999) and Raymond Francis Reynolds (1903–1986), a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad. She was of Scottish-Irish and English ancestry, and was raised in a strict Nazarene church. She had a brother two years her senior, and Reynolds was a Girl Scout, once saying that she wanted to die as the world's oldest living Girl Scout. Her father dug ditches and her mother took in washing clothes for others for income, while they they lived in a "shack" on Magnolia Street, in El Paso. "We may have been poor," she said, "but we always had something to eat, even if Dad had to go out on the desert and shoot jack rabbits."
One of the advantages of having been poor is that you learn to appreciate good fortune and the value of a dollar, and poverty holds no fear for you because you know you've gone through it and you can do it again...But we were always a happy family and a religious one. And I'm trying to inculcate in my children the same sense of values, the same tone that my mother gave to me."
Her family moved to Burbank, California, in 1939. At age sixteen, in 1948, while a student at Burbank High School, she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest. Soon after, she had a contract with Warner Bros and acquired a new first name via Jack Warner.
During her teenage years in Burbank, she rarely dated, said one of her closes high school friends. "They never found her attractive in school. She was cute, but sort of tomboyish, and her family never had any money to speak of. She never dressed well or drove a car. And, I think, during all the years in school, she was invited to only one dance." Her friend adds:
I say this in all sincerity. Debbie can serve as an inspiration to all young American womanhood. She came up the hard way, and she has a realistic sense of values based on faith, love, work and money. Life has been kind to her because she has been kind to life. She's a young woman with a conscience, which is something rare in Hollywood actresses. She also has a refreshing sense of honesty.
Her starring role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) led to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She then portrayed Jeanine Deckers in The Singing Nun (1966). In what Reynolds once called the "stupidest mistake of my entire career", she made headlines in 1970 after instigating a fight with the NBC television network over cigarette advertising on her weekly television show. Although she was at the time television's highest paid female performer, she quit the show for breaking its contract:
I was shocked to discover that the initial commercial aired during the premiere of my new series was devoted to a nationally advertised brand of cigarette (Pall Mall). I fully outlined my personal feelings concerning cigarette advertising ... that I will not be a party to such commercials which I consider directly opposed to health and well-being.
Reynolds continued to make appearances in film and television. She played Helen Chappel Hackett's mother, Deedee Chappel, on an episode of Wings titled, "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother", which originally aired on November 22, 1994. From 1999 to its 2006 series finale, she played Grace Adler's theatrical mother, Bobbi Adler, on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, which earned her an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2000. She plays a recurring role in the Disney Channel Original Movie Halloweentown film series as Aggie Cromwell. Reynolds made a guest appearance as a presenter at the 69th Academy Awards in 1997. She made a cameo role as herself in the 2004 film Connie and Carla. In 2013 she appeared in Behind the Candelabra, as the mother of Liberace.
With limited film and television opportunities coming her way, Reynolds accepted an opportunity to make her Broadway debut. She starred in the 1973 revival of Irene, a musical first produced 60 years before.[25] When asked why she waited so long to appear in a Broadway play, she explained:
Primarily because I had two children growing up. I could make movies and recordings and play in nearby Las Vegas and handle a television series without being away from them. Now, they are well on the way to being adults. Also, there was the matter of being offered a show that I felt might be right for me ... I felt that Irene was it and now was the time.
Along with Reynolds, her daughter Carrie was also making her Broadway debut in the play.[26] The production broke records for the highest weekly gross of any musical. For that production, she received a Tony nomination. Reynolds also starred in a self-titled Broadway revue, Debbie, in 1976. She toured with Harve Presnell in Annie Get Your Gun,[28] then wrapped up the Broadway run of Woman of the Year in 1983. In the late 1980s Reynolds repeated her role as Molly Brown in the stage version of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, first opposite Presnell (repeating his original Broadway and movie role) and later with Ron Raines.
Reynolds amassed a large collection of movie memorabilia, beginning with items from the landmark 1970 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer auction, and displayed them, first in a museum at her Las Vegas hotel and casino during the 1990s and later in a museum close to the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. On several occasions, she auctioned off items from the collection.
The museum was to relocate to be the centerpiece of the Belle Island Village tourist attraction in the resort city of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but the developer went bankrupt. The museum filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009.
Todd Fisher, Reynolds' son, announced that his mother was "heartbroken" to have to auction off her collection. It was valued at $10.79 million in the bankruptcy filing. The Los Angeles auction firm Profiles in History was given the responsibility of conducting a series of auctions. Among the "more than 3500 costumes, 20,000 photographs, and thousands of movie posters, costume sketches, and props" included in the sales were Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat and Marilyn Monroe's white "subway dress", whose skirt is lifted up by the breeze from a passing subway train in the film The Seven Year Itch (1955). The dress sold for $4.6 million; the final auction was held in May 2014.
In 1979, Reynolds opened her own dance studio in North Hollywood. In 1983 she released an exercise video titled Do It Debbie's Way!.
She purchased the Clarion Hotel and Casino, a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, in 1992 and renamed it the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel, but it was not a success. In 1997, Reynolds was forced to declare bankruptcy.
In June 2010, she replaced Ivana Trump answering reader queries for the weekly paper Globe.
Reynolds was married three times. Her first marriage was to singer Eddie Fisher in 1955. They were the parents of Carrie and Todd Fisher. The couple divorced in 1959 when Fisher had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds' good friend at the time, shortly after the death of Taylor's husband Mike Todd. The Eddie Fisher-Elizabeth Taylor affair caused a serious public scandal, even leading to the cancellation of Eddie Fisher's television show at the time. In 2011, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, just weeks before Elizabeth Taylor's death, Reynolds explained that she and Taylor happened to be traveling at the same time on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s when they made up. Reynolds sent a note to Taylor's room, and Taylor sent a note in reply asking to have dinner with Reynolds and end their feud. The two reconciled, and, as Reynolds put it, "... we had a wonderful evening with a lot of laughs". The 1990 film Postcards from the Edge was written by Reynolds' daughter Carrie Fisher and was semi-autobiographical, with the character of "Doris Mann" based on Reynolds.
Reynolds' second marriage, to millionaire businessman Harry Karl, lasted from 1960 to 1973. Reynolds later found herself in financial difficulty because of Karl's gambling and bad investments.
Reynolds' third marriage was to real estate developer Richard Hamlett from 1984 to 1996.
In 2010, she appeared in her own West End show Debbie Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous. Beginning in 1955, Reynolds was active in The Thalians, a charitable organization devoted to children and adults with mental health issues; In 2011 she stepped down after 56 years of involvement and became an emerita member.
Reynolds was hospitalized in October 2012 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, due to an adverse reaction to medication. She canceled appearances and concert engagements for the next three months.
On December 23, 2016, Reynolds' daughter, actress and writer Carrie Fisher, suffered a heart attack on a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles, and died at the age of 60 on December 27. On December 28 Reynolds was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, in fair-to-serious condition after a stroke at her son's home. Later that afternoon, Reynolds died in the hospital.
Reynolds is survived by her son Todd Fisher and her granddaughter Billie Lourd. Her son said that his mother's stress from the death of her daughter was partly responsible for her stroke. "Reynolds told him she missed her daughter and wanted to be with her," according to news reports.
Reynolds was the 1955 Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year. Her foot and handprints are preserved at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6654 Hollywood Boulevard, for live performance and a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars dedicated to her. In keeping with the celebrity tradition of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival of Winchester, Virginia, Reynolds was honored as the Grand Marshal of the 2011 ABF that took place from April 26 to May 1, 2011.
In November 2006 Reynolds received the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from Chapman University (Orange, California). On May 17, 2007, she was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nevada, Reno, where she had contributed for many years to the film studies program.
Dominique
Debbie Reynolds Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Dominique, nique, nique I will tell of Dominique
His goodness to acclaim
And I pray the song I sing
Will some simple pleasure bring
That the world shall know his name
I will tell of Dominique as I sing this little song
And when I sing the chorus all the world will sing along
Dominique, nique, nique it was good Saint Dominique
He lived for you and me
From his labors long ago
Came a better world, I know
And his love shall always be
"Though I'm poor", said Dominique as he spoke unto the Lord
"I will be your humble servant and your love is my reward"
Dominique, nique, nique I will follow Dominique
His burdens will I share
For his courage will I pray
His teachings to obey
His words shall be my prayer
By the kindness of his heart and the labor of his hand
He brought love and understanding as he wandered through the land
Dominique, nique, nique I will tell of Dominique
His goodness to acclaim
And I pray the song I sing
Will some simple pleasure bring
All the world shall know his name
Dominique the mighty warrior was a soldier of the Lord
His armor was devotion and the Gospel was his sword
Dominique, nique, nique it was good Saint Dominique
He lived for you and me
From his labors long ago
Came a better world I know
And his love shall always be
Through the blazing heat of summer and the chill of winter snow
I will follow Dominique
In his footsteps I will go
Dominique, nique, nique I will follow Dominique
His burdens will I share
For his courage will I pray
His teachings to obey
His words shall be my prayer
His goodness to acclaim
And I pray the song I sing
Will some simple pleasure bring
That the world shall know his name
I will tell of Dominique as I sing this little song
And when I sing the chorus all the world will sing along
Dominique, nique, nique it was good Saint Dominique
He lived for you and me
From his labors long ago
Came a better world, I know
And his love shall always be
"Though I'm poor", said Dominique as he spoke unto the Lord
"I will be your humble servant and your love is my reward"
Dominique, nique, nique I will follow Dominique
His burdens will I share
For his courage will I pray
His teachings to obey
His words shall be my prayer
By the kindness of his heart and the labor of his hand
He brought love and understanding as he wandered through the land
Dominique, nique, nique I will tell of Dominique
His goodness to acclaim
And I pray the song I sing
Will some simple pleasure bring
All the world shall know his name
Dominique the mighty warrior was a soldier of the Lord
His armor was devotion and the Gospel was his sword
Dominique, nique, nique it was good Saint Dominique
He lived for you and me
From his labors long ago
Came a better world I know
And his love shall always be
Through the blazing heat of summer and the chill of winter snow
I will follow Dominique
In his footsteps I will go
Dominique, nique, nique I will follow Dominique
His burdens will I share
For his courage will I pray
His teachings to obey
His words shall be my prayer
The song "Dominique" by Debbie Reynolds is a tribute to Saint Dominique, a historical figure known for his piety and devotion to Christianity. The lyrics speak of his goodness, love, and teachings, and the singer hopes that her song will bring some simple pleasure to those who hear it. The chorus encourages the world to join in singing his name. Saint Dominique is praised for his compassion and humble service to God, and the singer vows to follow in his footsteps and share his burdens.
The lyrics of "Dominique" capture the spirit of spirituality and community. The song's inspiring message, melody, and catchy chorus made it an instant hit when it was released in the 1960s. It was so popular that it was translated into many different languages and recorded by various artists. The song is also a reminder of the enduring legacy of Saint Dominique, who founded the Dominican Order and left an indelible mark on the church and the world.
Line by Line Meaning
Dominique, nique, nique
I will tell of Dominique
His goodness to acclaim
and speak of the good he brought to the world
And I pray the song I sing
I hope this song will
Will some simple pleasure bring
bring simple joy to listeners as they hear Dominique's name
That the world shall know his name
so that everyone will know his name
I will tell of Dominique as I sing this little song
I will share the story of Dominique as I sing
And when I sing the chorus all the world will sing along
and everyone will join in on the chorus
Dominique, nique, nique it was good Saint Dominique
It was Saint Dominique who did good
He lived for you and me
and lived to bring about a better world for us all
From his labors long ago
His work from long ago
Came a better world, I know
I know brought about a better world
And his love shall always be
and his love will never be forgotten
"Though I'm poor", said Dominique as he spoke unto the Lord
Even though he was poor, Dominique spoke to the Lord
"I will be your humble servant and your love is my reward"
promising to be a humble servant and to receive love as his reward
I will follow Dominique
I will follow in Dominique's footsteps
His burdens will I share
I will help him to bear his burdens
For his courage will I pray
I will pray for him to remain courageous
His teachings to obey
I will follow his teachings
His words shall be my prayer
I will pray using his words
By the kindness of his heart and the labor of his hand
Dominique showed kindness and worked hard
He brought love and understanding as he wandered through the land
as he traveled he shared love and understanding
Dominique the mighty warrior was a soldier of the Lord
Dominique was a strong warrior who fought for the Lord
His armor was devotion and the Gospel was his sword
His devotion and faith in the Gospel was his protection in battle
Through the blazing heat of summer and the chill of winter snow
Regardless of the weather
I will follow Dominique
I will continue to follow Dominique
In his footsteps I will go
I will continue to follow his lead
Lyrics © Capitol CMG Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Soeur Sourire, Noel Regney
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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Ian Edwards
Doesn't our sweet Debbie look like an angel? Yes, there was goodness in her heart always and that goodness brought a spiritual glow to her angelic face. The world over loved her voice, her face, her dancing, her versatility - a real born trouper. There will never ever be another Debbie Reynolds!
Gerard Walker
They don't make them like this any more. just fantastic.
Renate Schmidt
Sehr schön👍❤️❤️❤️
Latoshia Jennings
I love this song better than the original
Genevieve Ramirez
Thank God
TeriLynn -MsMercury-
@Latoshia Jennings well the original is in French and if you don’t speak French, that makes sense! 😊
Ima Done
Debbie Reynolds had us all singing this little song.
Patricia Rodriguez
I looked it up in google, it turns out Saint Dominic was Spanish. I always thought he was French. I read his story. Very interesting and inspiring.
De Moor
Wasnt he the 'founder' of dominicans?
Martunas ari
Love her voice